The RedState Box Office Report – Hopping Past Theaters This Weekend

The Easter holiday is normally looked at as a flush time for the movies with such a large segment of schools being out for the holiday. The kids, teens, and collegians that are off made for a flush pool, except for one thing this year: “The Avengers”. With the next “Endgame” installment opening this week no other studio wanted to release an expensive production, knowing it would only see a week’s worth of business.

As such an inexpensive horror effort rises to the fore, and some other smaller genre releases also took a chance at the less crowded schedule to garner what they could for one week. As it ends up this was the lowest Easter frame in 14 years. So here are the titles that were hidden away in theaters this week.

THE CURSE OF LA LLORONA – $26.0 Million
James Wan produced this horror entry based on the legend from Latin cultures. This beats projections rather handily, as expectations were looking at an open near the $20 million range. Made for less than $10 million this should be a success for the Warner Brother/New Line production.

2. SHAZAM! – $16.5m
The DC superhero has been on a decent run, and this is shown by only a -32% drop here in week #3. Billy Batson has now made over $100 million. This was a smaller effort compared to the bigger names from the DC hero universe, so it is being regarded as the second consecutive victory from the troubled comics outlet.

3. BREAKTHROUGH – $10.2m
This is a faith-based true life story that stars Topher Grace, and Chrissy Metz, from TV’s “This Is Us”. It bears the dual distribution of Disney/Fox, representing the recent merger of the studios. It has been a strong start for the low budget drama, as the film debuted on Wednesday and has made almost $15 million so far.

4. CAPTAIN MARVEL – $9.0m
After seven weeks this comic success technically saw an uptick in interest, as is was basically flat against last week while dropping a few hundred screens. That interest is obviously due to fans re-upping their interest ahead of the “Endgame” release. One thing to be certain about in the coming week of PR hype — Brie Larson remains a humor-free social activist scold.

5. LITTLE – $8.2m
The age-switching comedy had a respectable opening last week, and here it takes a respectable drop of -47%. It remains to be learned if it will reach profitability, coming in with a $20 million budget, plus the promotional expenses. To date it has taken in just $30 million, so there is some work ahead for it to see a profit.

6. DUMBO – $7.1m
The good news for Disney (what little there has been) is that this was a smaller drop of -25%, and the film has now crossed over $100 million. It is doing better overseas, but even the global total of $2275 million is coming in well below where it needs to be to start seeing a profit.

7. PET SEMATARY – $4.65m
Much like the plot, the horror classic reboot has reanimated the story but it is a lesser version of the original. It is still drawing a decent enough figure, now approaching the $50 million level on a limited cost.

8. MISSING LINK – $4.57m
Here is an example where the metrics require interpretation. It looks like a very strong hold of -22% for the second weekend, but that was against a very poor debut last week where it took in less than $6 million, so there was not far to drop.

9. US – $4.0m
The Jordan Peele success has now essentially matched the figures of his original release, “Get Out”. While it cost a bit more than his first effort — $20 million, versus $4.5 million — Universal is not crying at all about the return.

10. HELLBOY – $3.8m
Here is what a complete failure looks like. After a disappointing debut last week this has tanked -70% this weekend. One of the notable failures of the year.